SQUEEZE, Difford and Tilbrook – as it happens

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Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)

Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)
(Difford/Tilbrook)

They do it down on Camber Sands
They do it at Waikiki
Lazing about the beach all day
At night the cricket’s creepy
Squinting faces at the sky
A Harold Robbins paperback
Surfers drop their boards and dry
And everybody wants a hat

Shrinking in the sea so cold
Topless ladies look away
A he-man in a sudden shower
Shelters from the rain
You wish you had a motor boat
To pose around the harbour bar
And when the sun goes off to bed
You hook it up behind the car

Two fat ladies window shop
Something for the mantelpiece
In for bingo all the nines
A panda for sweet little niece
The coach drivers stand about
Looking at a local map
About the boy he’s gone away
Down to next door’s caravan

But behind the chalet
My holiday’s complete
And I feel like William Tell
Maid Marian on her tiptoed feet
Pulling mussels from a shell

16 Responses to "Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)"

The phrase ‘In for bingo’ is referring to the two ladies in the song going to play bingo – the popular game of chance where you mark numbers which are called out by a ‘caller’ onto a card you have bought in a bingo hall. It’s also a playful reference to the ‘two fat ladies’ in the verse as bingo callers routinely used nicknames for the numbers (from 1 to 90) to make sure people didn’t mistake (for example) 13 for 30 in a noisy hall. 13 would be called as “Unlucky for some, 13” and 30 would be called out as “Burlington Bertie, 30” so make sure people didn’t mark off the wrong number. Two fat ladies is the bingo caller’s visual joke nickname for 88, “Two fat ladies, 88.”

“All the nines” seems to me to be a Chris Difford mistake as bingo numbers only go up to 90 (in the UK at least). “All the sixes, 66” is used, and “All the sevens, 77” is used but it’s not possible to call all the nines as 99 is too high a number for a bingo ball. Perhaps it should really be “All the eights.”

The other ‘oddity’ in the lyric is that William Tell and Maid Marian had nothing to do with one another. William Tell was a Swiss man who legend has it shot an apple off his son’s head to save their lives. Maid Marian became Robin Hood’s companion in English folklore centuries later.

Pulling Mussels (From the Shell) was released in 1980 as a single and comes from the Argy Bargy album. The lyrics are interesting because they convey the sense of being young and inexperienced, of adventure, of disappointment with the realities of life and of sexual desire common in Chris Difford’s early writing.

The lyric starts by putting us directly and confusingly in the middle of the action, as if we’ve just strayed into the middle of a story. It’s a technique loved by film makers:

They do it down on Camber Sands
They do it at Waikiki

We are instantly disorientated and want to know what ‘it’ is. What is it that they do on Camber Sands and what is it that they do at Waikiki? Camber Sands is near Rye in Sussex and has a Pontins holiday park where generations of holidaymakers from London and further afield have gone for caravan and chalet holidays. It was always cheap and close. Waikiki by contrast is in Honolulu in Hawaii, probably the most exotic and far away place someone in London could imagine in the 1970s. An important beach resort there is run by Hilton. In a single line Chris Difford has contrasted places nearby and far away and familiar and exotic and said that the same happens wherever you are.

Lazing about the beach all day
At night the cricket’s creepy

A single line (or two depending on how you present it) summarises an entire day and night on holiday. Spending all day on the beach and the curious feeling of playing games after dark as your night vision adjusts.

Squinting faces at the sky
A Harold Robbins paperback

Chris Difford’s powers of observation allow him to show tiny vignettes of life – a squinting face in the sun, a holiday paperback book – which give the impression of the wider scene. Harold Robbins (1916–1997) is one of the best-selling American fiction writers of all time and is just the sort of author whose books would be stocked at a train station or stationers.

Surfers drop their boards and dry
And everybody wants a hat

Chris relocates the scene from Rye to Honolulu again in a single line (as I’m not sure there’s surfing of the same quality in Sussex as there is in Hawaii). The creative idea is to show the same story happening all over the world.

Shrinking in the sea so cold
Topless ladies look away
A he-man in a sudden shower
Shelters from the rain
You wish you had a motor boat
To pose around the harbour bar
And when the sun goes off to bed
You hook it up behind the car

There are some very familiar themes in this section with Chris Difford expressing his yearning and his feelings of inadequacy through observation of others. “Shrinking in the sea, so cold,” could refer to something that men notice about themselves – that when they get cold, their penis shrinks. “Topless ladies look away,” refers to the feeling of being rejected because of being sexually inadequate. It’s a subtle but cheeky penis reference. Have you thought that when singing along? Glenn often sings “Shrinking from the sea” instead.

“You wish you had a motor boat,” is an expression of Chris Difford’s yearning to be someone else. Many of Chris’s lyrics deal with the psychological stress between what life is really like and how he imagines it should be. It’s summed up best by “It’s not like that on the TV, when it’s cool for cats, It’s cool for cats.” There’s a disappointment with life, a sadness with the cards that life has dealt you; a feeling of bitterness that nothing in real life ever lives up to the anticipation. It expresses the wish that you were someone else and living a different life.

Two fat ladies window shop
Something for the mantelpiece
In for bingo all the nines
A panda for sweet little niece

Pulling Mussels (From the Shell) is the only Squeeze song which mentions a mantelpiece, although it appears in Labelled With Love as a shelf from which dust is dislodge whilst winding the clock.

‘In for bingo’ is used as a pun on the two fat ladies who were window shopping. Bingo is still a popular game of chance where you mark numbers which are called out by a ‘caller’ onto a card you have bought. It’s a playful reference to the ‘two fat ladies’ in the verse as bingo callers routinely used nicknames for the numbers (from 1 to 90) to make sure people didn’t mistake (for example) 13 for 30 in a noisy hall. 13 would be called as “Unlucky for some, 13” and 30 would be called out as “Burlington Bertie, 30” so make sure people didn’t mark off the wrong number. Two fat ladies is the bingo caller’s visual joke nickname for 88, “Two fat ladies, 88.”

Chris writing “All the nines” is a mistake as bingo numbers only go up to 90 (in the UK at least). “All the sixes, 66” is used, and “All the sevens, 77” is used but it’s not possible to call all the nines as 99 is too high a number for a bingo ball. Perhaps it should really be “All the eights”?

“A panda” is a cuddly toy, probably won as a bingo prize.

The coach drivers stand about
Looking at a local map
About the boy he’s gone away
Down to next door’s caravan

I love the sudden shift of “About the boy; he’s gone away” as you suddenly feel that there is a leading actor in this story and that it’s not just a series of impressionistic observations on the seaside. Glenn often sings “About the boy who’s gone away,” which gives the misleading impression that the coach drivers

But behind the chalet
My holiday’s complete
And I feel like William Tell
Maid Marian on her tiptoed feet
Pulling mussels from a shell

The other ‘oddity’ in the lyric is that William Tell and Maid Marian had nothing to do with one another. William Tell was a Swiss man who legend has it shot an apple off his son’s head to save their lives. Maid Marian became Robin Hood’s companion in English folklore centuries later. I read an interview with Chris where he said he realised he’d made a mistake. As the words Maid and made are homophones there’s also the potential pun of “William Tell made Marion” as well as “William Tell Maid Marian”. Do you think Chris actually meant Robin Hood?

But why is his ‘holiday complete’? What *is* pulling mussels from the shell? Pulling mussels is extracting something of value, even of great value such as a pearl, from something that is tightly closed. Pulling mussels from their shells is putting your hands inside a woman’s knickers and using your fingers to separate the labia majora and ‘release’ the labia minora.

To summarise: He may not be a he-man, he may not own a motor-boat, he may have a penis which shrinks in the cold water, he may be someone that attractive women won’t look at; but at least he got his hands inside a girls knickers behind the chalet. His holiday is complete.

What do you think of my interpretation? What ideas and images does the song conjure up for you? Will you listen to it in quite the same way again?

When I first heard this song — I think it hadn’t even been released yet — I thought he was saying Pulling Muscles for Michelle, and I still think that’s a play on words he intended.
And what happens behind the bike sheds that might make you pull a muscle? I think he’s also playing with ‘made Marian on her tiptoe feet’ in the sense of, to make someone = to have sex with them. How do you do it outside behind the chalets? Standing up. Saucy.
Or maybe I have a dirty mind :)

Yes Grahame I think you’re right about the sex-standing-up meaning behind ‘tiptoed feet’. Saucy indeed.
I’m not sure about your interpretation of ‘made’ as ‘making out’ as that’s an Americanism and was only heard in American films and not used in British culture in the 1970s – or maybe it was just that I never had the luck to ‘make out’!
No matter how dirty your mind, it’s as if nothing compared to Chris Difford’s! :)

Well, I didn’t really mean ‘making out’, in the sense of teenagers kissing and so on, I agree that would have sounded foreign to us in those days, nobody would say it — and if you did, copying it off some American TV programme, you would have had the piss roundly taken out of you.
I meant making someone, having sex with them — which if you had said it in normal conversation would have sounded equally poncy, but maybe allowed in a song lyric?
Obviously I don’t know what he meant, maybe he’ll hear about this and chime in :)

I think the line ‘all the nines’ is referring to the ‘two fat ladies’ being dressed up to the nines. Having been on many holidays to Pontins, everybody would get there ‘gladrags’ on and my aunt used to rush in the ballroom for the bingo and save a table for the rest of us for the evening entertainment.

That sounds like a good guess -another tricky Difford double entendre… done up to the nines, expressed in bingo terminology.
My family went to Pontins Camber Sands too, in the early seventies (maybe even the late sixties holy cow I’m old).

At the recent Radio 4 interview/gig I asked Chris “what was William Tell doing with Robin Hood’s girlfriend”? He put it down to lyrical dyslexia, as I recall. And of course ‘Tell’ rhymes with ‘shell’. I suspect all the nines (bingo 99/dressed up to the nines) is a similar play on words. Reminds me of the incubator in Junction – it’s not where you’d take a pregnant woman but the rhyme/play on words justifies it.

Always thought the William Tell/Maid Marian part was brilliant. I second the “How do you do it outside behind the chalets? Standing up. Saucy” view, and since its from a young inexperienced person’s perspective, just getting it in right in that position would make a young anxious man feel like…”Yes! Bullseye!” His partner goes on tiptoes, either because he’s just slightly off the mark (sorry) and she’s trying to help him, or he’s hit it directly and its her involuntary reaction. It’s just a vivid image of two young lovers fumbling around in the dark.
The fact that the historical figures don’t match does seem like a mistake, but to me its OK because its in keeping with the young man’s perspective – he’s no history expert so he’s just throwing out names he vaguely remembers: William Tell – great aim; Maid Marian – desirable prize.
Overall, the whole song strikes me as someone with a real gift for writing vivid, funny lyrics.